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Wednesday, 3 April 2013

March Update: Falling Behind

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts."

- Sir Winston Churchill

Okay--the quotation above is maybe a bit overblown. Churchill was fighting a war and I'm swinging kettlebells for fun. Nevertheless, as most of my friends and family know, I tend to take things too seriously. This challenge is serious business to me--it represents a wholehearted effort to make some significant behavioural changes, not just sling weights around.

One quarter of the year has now come and gone, and I should be at least a quarter of the way to my goal--but I'm not. I'm only 15% of the way there. I got off to a great start in January and thought I could keep up the pace, but things haven't quite gone to plan. Life tends to intervene (domestic catastrophes, illness), and a big part of the challenge is learning to let these things go and press on. Besides, the real reason I started doing this was to force myself to exercise more consistently, and I've done that. Half the battle is just showing up.

Kettlebell-wise, things are actually going really well. I still haven't had a chance to submit a ranking, and it's unlikely that I will be able to attend the competition in Victoria in May--two of my original goals. (I'm still recovering financially from the sewer backup flood disaster. Sewer repair is expensive!) However, I'm lifting heavier than ever, and I went through a whole Pentathlon on my own on Sunday (I'm entered in a Pentathlon competition here in Edmonton on May 4). The results were pretty good (the Pentathlon is kind of a marathon event--the whole thing takes about an hour), and with another month to prepare, I'm confident that I'll be able to do well. I've added another workout each week (Sunday), for a total of three girevoy sport sessions, in addition to the ever-popular Saturday Hellcamp Circuit and the occasional run. I'm probably in better shape now than I ever was when I was younger.

So, I'm still plugging away. My calloused hands are a source of pride, and I've even lost some weight since the beginning of the year. Having to make up ground is an incentive to keep going (I'll have to miss yet another week of training this month because I'm going on a business trip). And besides, I'm doing this for fun, right?